Since MacWorld in early January, Apple Computer has plastered San Francisco with ads touting their latest family of notebook computers as "The greenest family of notebooks", replete with photos of the thin and sexy machines awash in lush greenery. But are they really? By how much? And how would we know?

Apple has indeed made some bold moves towards improving the environmental performance of their products with this line of notebook computers:

While impressive and deserving of kudos, there's a cost for all of this "greenness" in terms of research and development funding " admittedly a strategic investment by Apple and their suppliers - and the price of the product, which runs at least 50% higher than a comparable (in terms of technical performance) product from a competitor (albeit running Microsoft Windows).

While the enclosure may be more durable and perhaps with certain major components that are more readily recyclable, one must ask: just how much more "green" is it than any one of Apple's competitors' products? How far ahead of the pack are they? Unfortunately these are impossible questions to answer. Why? At one level, it's because we don't have standards defining metrics that are granular enough to more accurately measure environmental performance of our products. Consider EPEAT's three levels of Bronze, Silver, and Gold. In fact, "Gold" is hardly exclusive anymore. 18 months ago there were no Gold products and few Silver; now a quarter of them are Gold and the rest Silver; there are few Bronze. EPEAT could use a couple more levels, like "Platinum" and "Titanium", right about now.

But at a much more fundamental level, it's because we in the electronics industry are simply reacting to government regulations and NGO demands. Let's face it: we do not have the depth and extent of knowledge, information, and understanding of how to optimize and compete on environmental performance to the same degree that we have achieved in both technical and cost performance of our products. This is not so much our fault as a vestige of how the industrial revolution has played out over the centuries and how the chemical industry has subsequently held a stranglehold over substance identity, toxicity, and other environmental performance information.

Chemical companies and formulators have, to a great extent, considered the identities of the substances they use to be a big part of their intellectual property. Thus, much of what you buy from them has a trade name to hide substances and formulas, but comes complete with all the technical properties you care about when you design your products. That, coupled with a complete lack of product-targeted environmental regulations through much of the first couple centuries of the industrial revolution, has resulted in a lack of information, tools, and knowledge about environmental performance of chemical substances the further downstream in the supply chain you go.

This presents a big challenge; in fact, it's probably the biggest external challenge to the "hows" and "whys" of manufacturing our industry and other complex product manufacturing industries have ever had to face. Tools like Clean Production Action's Green Screen are an important start, and the availability of more toxicological data from the EU's REACH regulation will also be very important. California's Green Chemistry Initiative and several standards development projects being initiated by a variety of organizations will further provide incentive and the sorely needed ability to define metrics.

The electronics industry has shown the world how to relentlessly drive improvements in technical and business performance over the past several decades. We now have the opportunity " and the imperative " to, along with other manufacturing industries, turn these capabilities towards achieving dramatic improvements in environmental performance. Can it, too, follow Moore's Law? Let's find out.